SHADOW SELF #17/20

Cypher::Prophet is an artwork dedicated to the punk origins of blockchain designed and realized by hackatao and hex6c. In the transposition into images we started from the iconographic canons of the hacker (hoodie, laptop, cryptographic elements) and associated them with the figure of the prophet, thus highlighting the predictive nature of the works of Eric Hughes (Cypherpunk Manifesto, 1988) and Timothy C. May (Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1993) as well as of the blockchain inventors Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta (How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document, The Journal of Cryptography, 1991). Read the full story on https://medium.com/@hex6c/cypher-prophet-the-punk-origins-of-blockchain-1e8fce311e72

Self Portrait taken in the East Village, January 2019. Stereoscopic Effect created with Facebook 3D photo, "painted" with neural imaging, then digitally pixelsorted. Single Edition Hi Res GIF Token by Sarah Zucker.

I made a picture from start to finish every single day from May 1st, 2007 - January 7th, 2021. This is every motherfucking one of those pictures.

José Delbo sent me his striking pencil sketch and powerful inked work, which I then interpreted in oil on canvas. I wanted to create a very painterly piece with obvious brush marks etc, but I was also aiming for a nostalgic feel, a kind of 1980’s superhero comic book look, the kind I grew up with. My goal with this animation was to try to recreate, in part, the creative process that both artists went through with the visual information I had. I was able to showcase my painting process more accurately as I could take photographs of my progress throughout. Consecutive images could then be layered like brush strokes over José’s drawing to create the impression that this was one continuous artwork from pencil, to ink, to completed painting. The representation of the line sketch at the beginning, then pencil/ink and lastly the paint layers being applied demonstrate both artists’ struggle for the right lines, tone, form, and colour until the work is finally completed. As the oil was still wet with each photograph the glare of my studio lights can be seen in the brush strokes. Eventually, the figure emerges and as it does, our hero comes to life, looking directly at the viewer -- but is he grimacing in approval or disgust? We will never know for sure as just before he can say anything, white paint is brushed across the canvas entirely and the process begins again. Only the bat is quick enough to escape.

OWNER: Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim Berners-Lee, b. 1955 Source Code for the WWW 1990-1991 Work includes: Original archive of dated and time-stamped files containing the source code, written between 3 October 1990 and 24 August 1991. These files contain code with approximately 9,555 lines, the contents of which include implementations of the three languages and protocols invented by Sir Tim; HTML (Hypertext Markup Language); HTTP (Hyper Transfer Protocol); and URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers), as well as the original HTML documents that instructed early web users on how to use the application Animated visualization of the code being written (Video, black & white, silent), lasting 30 minutes 25 seconds A Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) representation of the full code (A0 841mm wide by 1189 mm high), created by Sir Tim from the original files using Python, with a graphic representation of his physical signature at lower right A letter written in the README.md file (in “markdown” format) by Sir Tim in June of 2021, reflecting upon the code and his process of creating it Non-fungible Token ERC-721 Minted on June 15, 2021, ed. 1/1 Smart Contract Address: 0x86ade256037d80d6d42df8df96d5be21cd25bd8f

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